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Archive for May, 2012

How about hitting instructor? Or better yet, how about czar of hitting, training

and managing the entire organization’s hitting instructors? That way, we could begin to see a system wide approach to hitting that would, if Bonds is serious, of course, begin to correct the vast deficiencies in this team’s ability to develop and train hitters.

UPDATE: It’d be nice if Lincecum could start contributing. As in, wins. The Giants are 2-9 in his starts. If he was pitching like the Freak that he is, the team would be in a lot better shape.

No Brian Wilson, no Panda, no Lincecum, (or, should I say, no Freak)…. When are we going to add Freddie Sanchez’s name to the list of players who go from the Giants to the broadcast booth?

This team is boring, bori

ng, boring. Actually, when they are bat, they are boring. In the field, they are brutal. They look like the ’62 Mets.

How about a home run every once in a while? How about catching the fucking ball, I mean what the hell were Burriss and Crawford doing last night?

Since I wrote about the good hitting back on April 26th, Posey has absolutely cratered. 9 for 50 in May with all nine hits being singles. Um, maybe he’s not healthy?

Belt is at .239 with no homers. Schierholz never plays, why? Matt Cain has a better batting average than Burris, Crawford, Huff and Theriot.

25 home runs? The whole team has 25 home runs? Do I need to point out that Josh Hamilton has 18 all by himself?

This team has been ravaged by injuries, but still, we are among the very few teams in baseball who simply do not develop position players at all. Other teams have injuries and they bring up guys who can at least pick it and throw it. We apparently cannot. Why bother fielding minor league teams when you can’t pull somebody up who has even the fundamentals down? No strike zone judgement, no speed, and no glove? What the hell is going on in our system?

Let me ask a clearer question: When does this failure get fixed? When do we bring in somebody who knows how to put together a minor league system. Because whoever is running the system for the Giants absolutely and unequivocally does not?

No veteran minor leaguers who can hit .250 and catch it at any positions?! A handful of young players who show any promise at all, (aside from the apparently talented Mr. Brown, which begs the question, WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?!?!

Honestly, this is a travesty.

UPDATE: Jim, you have a point, to a degree. “Developed” Posey? Sandoval? When 21 and 22-year olds make the majors and excel, there’s not very much development going on. It’s more a point of being lucky or, at best, prescient in the draft. At worst, it’s

finding a needle in a haystack. If the Giants had a record of developing young hitters, I’d be inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt. There is no such track record. Two real hitters in 20 years is disgraceful, a failure of such immense proportion as to be almost unimaginably bad.

Without looking, I’d bet the Royals have had better results than that. The Mariners. For that matter, even you want to give them that they have focused on developing pitchers to use as trade bait to get hitters, the results doing that, basically since the Kent and Burks deals, have been flat-out abysmal. Their free agent signings have been equally preposterous. So, on every front available to a team to put out a major league offense, the Giants have failed completely.

Matt Cain continues to get no run support, the story of his career, as he lost 2-1 to the Marlins last night. As I wrote a while back, games like these are exac

tly why I speculated that Cain might consider leaving the Giants. A Hall of Fame career could very well be in the process of being derailed by the lack of run support he’s received since he gotten to the Show.

UPDATE: More hard luck as

the Giants lose Pablo Sandoval for the second year in a row to a broken hamate bone in his hand. Geez. This team seems doomed to squander another year of top-flight pitching as their offense completely tanks, and key players sit and watch. Where’s Stan Conte when you need him?

All commentary is the opinion of John J Perricone unless otherwise noted.
None of the opinions expressed should be construed as being endorsed by theSan Francisco Giants,
Major League Baseball, or any other organization mentioned herein.